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“Your brother does know how to use paper and pen.” And Quinn knew how to get a wife unlaced in thirty seconds flat.
“Stephen’s fraternal sentiments aren’t often in evidence, but I suspect he’s worried for Althea. The letter was succinct.”
Quinn passed Jane a folded, embossed sheet of vellum. She knew Stephen’s exquisite penmanship—he was a brilliant draftsman—but the words surprised her.
Althea headed for more trouble than even I can handle. Millicent abetting the nonsense. Get your ducal arse up here. Love to Jane and girls.
Stephen.
Jane set the letter on the mantel as Quinn looped his arms around her from behind. “So are we going north, Quinn?”
He kissed her nape, the warmth of his lips causing a delicious shiver. “I do believe we are, but first, Your Grace, I suggest we go to bed.”
“A fine idea, sir. One of your finest.” Jane took him by the hand, led him into the bedroom, and locked the door.
Althea waved Jane’s letter under Stephen’s nose, regretting—not for the first time—that smacking a man in a Bath chair would be unsporting. “You summoned the watch on me?”
“I did not summon the watch, I merely…”
He wheeled away to the music room’s pianoforte and heaved to his feet. Using the piano, a cane, and the arm of the chair for balance, he levered himself onto the piano bench.
“You merely…?” Althea prompted, stalking after him. “Merely let all of society know my own family doesn’t consider me capable of even socializing in the shires without supervision? You merely sabotaged my first humble effort to present myself as an adult female of independent means? You merely went behind my back to tattle to Quinn and Jane when all I’m doing is being neighborly in godforsaken Yorkshire?”
Was there any exasperation greater than a meddling sibling? Jane, at least, had had the decency to warn Althea of Stephen’s perfidy, but Jane had also packed up her duke and her household and begun the march north.
“You might be in godforsaken Yorkshire,” Stephen said, folding back the cover over the piano keyboard, “but that only means your consequence makes you a bigger target. I did inform our family of your situation, but you should also know Quinn sent me a note in return. It seems Lady Phoebe Philpot wrote to Jane, suggesting you are in need of your family’s loving guidance, and you should be summoned to London posthaste. How many people are you inviting?”
“Don’t you dare try to distract me, you skulking rodent.” And of course Lady Phoebe would write to Jane. Althea was surprised her ladyship hadn’t taken out an advertisement in theTimesnotifying the whole world that Althea Wentworth was prone to dancing naked on the village green.
But that Stephen would break sibling ranks now, that he’d tattle to Jane…Althea was as bewildered as she was angry, and she was very angry.
“The invitations haven’t gone out yet,” Stephen observed, starting on a stately Beethoven slow movement. “You could put this little gathering for a hundred of the county’s biggest gossips off until autumn.”
The guest list exceeded a hundred. “Millicent wants the ballroom full, and that means she keeps adding to the tally in the name of balancing the numbers.”
Then too, Althea’s little corner of Yorkshire was close enough to York itself that mustering a few score families with daughters to fire off, bachelor sons, widowed aunties, and well-heeled uncles was no challenge for Millicent at all.
“Millicent has gone daft,” Stephen said, launching into a lyrical melody that involved crossing his hands to add the descant. “This happens in the older female from time to time. Her humors get out of balance and—”
“Millicent isloyal,” Althea said, setting Jane’s letter on the mantel. “Millicent supports me and understands that for me to take this small step, amid a rural society starved for entertainments, with you on hand to be the host, is a prudent means of putting myself above gossip and speculation.”
“Is not.” He played on, sweet, placid notes filling the music room.
“If you think to soothe me with confectionery tunes, Stephen, think again. I am nearing thirty—”
He snorted.
“—and must set aside the fiction that a gaggle of Mayfair matchmakers can define my fate. Viscount Ellenbrook is not the only eligible male in the north, and—”
“And you think to bring Rothhaven up to scratch,” Stephen said, “by luring those other eligibles from their card parties and country dances. You’ll be the gracious aristocrat deigning to open her home to the bumpkins and cits, and your hopeless Duke of Deception will come to his senses and offer for you.”
Stephen spoke calmly, like the music rippling gently from the keyboard, and that made his accusation all the worse.
All the more credible.
“When did you grow so hateful, Stephen?”
“When Jack Wentworth broke parts of me that I had plans for. Did it never occur to you that relying onmeto play the part of host is absurd? A man who can barely stand is no asset to a gathering that features hours of dancing. I can hardly manage to wheel myself a short distance without spilling my punch, and I will not sit in my Bath chair while the receiving line files past me. You and Milly simply assumed I could be press-ganged into putting a veneer of familial approval on your mad scheme.”
